Administrative expenses of insurance companies: An experiment with norwegian statistics

In a multi-line insurance company it may be difficult to decide how administrative expenses should be allocated to the different lines: Fire, Motor, Marine etc. Accountants will have their methods for allocating the costs, and the State Supervision Board may well have its opinion about the different methods. It is not the purpose of this note to discuss or evaluate these methods, since this will require fairly detailed information about the companies. Instead we shall look at the problem as a complete outsider, with access only to published statistics.